Ernest Belfort Bax, the first men’s rights activist, writing over 100 years ago, talks about the sexual trade union’s eternal obsession with the age of consent :
If there is one demand which is popular with the Feminists, it is for
raising the age of consent from sixteen to eighteen or twenty-one years,
at which latter age, presumably, the right to the Franchise, if conceded,
would come into operation. They are therefore evidently of opinion that the woman who has only just ceased to need the protection of the law in the control of her own body becomes immediately fully qualified to have a voice in the management of public affairs!(Problems of Man, Mind and Morals)
Note that the effective age of consent throughout the EU is now 18, yet Austrian 16 year olds are judged capable of voting in national elections. Last year an Austrian man was jailed for viewing an American website which contained, it was accepted in court, only nude photographs of adults who were no less than 19 years of age. Nevertheless, he was jailed as a paedophile under feminist progressive ‘virtual child pornography’ laws. A law voted in by the same government which had determined that 16 year olds were rational and mature enough to decide matters of state. Can there be anything more degrading to the female sex than the feminist idea that they have less judgement regarding what they do with their own bodies than they have over complex matters of government, economics, and international affairs?
The age of consent has always been central to feminism. In fact, it has been its primary driving force right from the beginning. The purpose of this website is not to campaign for a reduction in the age of consent from the present feminist age of 16. For one thing, there is little or no chance of that happening in this author’s lifetime. However, I have no shame whatsoever in stating my clear belief that the age of consent ought to be what it still technically is in the majority of major civilised nations – namely, 14. And I will never be morally shamed for this by creatures who compare killing defenceless children to shopping for couches at Ikea. Nor by the disgusting manginas who support such views as ‘progressive’ and ‘tolerant’ in order to get laid with those creatures.
Perhaps there is a slim chance that this website might have a role in building a resistance to the gradual feminist increasing of the age of consent to 18, to 21, or even beyond. But I recognise that even this isn’t a realistic goal. So in all honesty, the only reason I talk about the age of consent is because this site seeks to explain feminism. And in a very real sense, the age of consent is what feminism largely is. The defining goal of the brood mare trade union.
I would also make clear that the opinions expressed on these pages, regarding the age of consent and related issues, are not representative of ‘the men’s rights community’. A community that I do not particularly identify with. In particular, leading men’s rights activists such as Paul Elam and Angry Harry are in no way associated with theantifeminist.com and have both gone on record to declare their strong support for present age of consent laws.
By the way, to those MRAs fearful that any discussion of this topic may be suicidal to the cause, I suggest you just throw back at the child murderers the names of Germaine Greer and Natasha Walter. These two delightful hypocrites will be the subject of a forthcoming post.
Ernest Belfort Bax is a true unsung hero in the cause of men’s rights, his essays thoroughly document the misandry and hipocrisy of late 19th century and early 20th century feminism and were a major influence on me in my growth as an advocate for men’s issues/male sexuality…yet most people have never heard of him, and this is unfortunate as many people (including most MRAs) believe that early feminism was a time when feminism was a “noble movement” that “just wanted equality” until some faceless cabal of “man-hating lesbians” hijacked the movement…BUNK it’s been the same have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too movement all along as documented by Bax and by Steve Moxon in his chapter on Suffragettes in The Woman Racket. In fact my favorite feminist hipocrite (out of a candidacy pool the size of the Pacific Ocean) is Suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst…fighting for votes for women and FORCED MILITARY CONSCRIPTION FOR MEN ONLY! She also organized the White Feather Campaign too whereby young women in Britain would hand flowers to young men not in military service during WW1 in order to shame them into jumping into the trenches and risk getting blown to bits….yeah that’s “fighting for equality”!
QUOTE: “I would also make clear that the opinions expressed on these pages, regarding the age of consent and related issues, are not representative of ‘the men’s rights community’. A community that I do not particularly identify with.”
To me the Men’s Rights Movement is on the right track WRT debunking the pay gap myth, protesting sexist double standards WRT criminal law sentencing, exposing bias in the family court system, drawing attention to men’s health issues and domestic violence against men…etc. However the MRM really comes up short with regards to many issues relating to male sexual freedom and in fact many MRAs (as you have noted) support Age of Consent/Pedohysteria madness…they want to see adult females who have sex with teenage boys to be treated just as harshly as adult males who have sex with teenage girls. Another thing that disturbs me about the MRM is that there seems to be a real growth of sex-negativity in the movement, particularly in it’s more conservative branches and also among many of the MGTOWers. Some MRAs of this philosophy advocate that the closing of the sexual free market should be the goal of the MRM. Examples of this mentality are the writings of F. Roger Devlin whose views on sexuality are pretty much the anti-thesis of those typically expressed here. Quite frankly I suspect that he is a conservative/religious type who is trying to infiltrate the MRM to sell his snakeoil to frustrated male betas.
I think Bax would be turning in his grave at some of the anti male sexuality views of modern mras.
I’m going to write an article on Emmeline Pankhurst for my new history of feminism site. If you want to leave all the relevant info you have I could write it up for the article. I know that she played a key role in raising the age of consent to 16.
Regarding sexual conservatism in the MRM, the way I see it is that you simply cannot turn the clock back and close the free sexual market without causing a lot of pain and injustice to millions of men (even it were true that men ‘had it better’ before the opening of the sexual market). Men who want all porn criminilized etc aren’t men’s rights supporters, or at least not when dicussing such issues. I agree 100% with the comment about the snake oil for beta males. Hopefully, as sex technology advances (tactile holograms, 3D virtual reality etc) the mass of beta males will start to embrace the free sexual market. And when they know that they could have a life time of ass rape for having sex with a freely downloadable perfect representation of Anna Kournikova, they too will take up arms against the sexual trade union.
“Many people (including most MRAs) believe that early feminism was a time when feminism was a “noble movement” that “just wanted equality” until some faceless cabal of “man-hating lesbians” hijacked the movement.”
“Another thing that disturbs me about the MRM is that there seems to be a real growth of sex-negativity in the movement, particularly in it’s more conservative branches and also among many of the MGTOWers.”
Let’s see:
1) Loss of religious power in the west causes loss of misandry. (along with new lifestyles created by industrial revolution)
2) Social purity/feminism attempts to reinstate misandry by secular means.
3) True liberals attempt to eliminate misandry by the pill and the sexual revolution.
4) Feminists and their conservative ‘enemies’ strike back with a false flag operation posing as liberals while they create laws intended to produce a class of bitter, misogynistic men who they can then set loose on the real liberals.
5) VR tech? Or the concentration camp?
From what I have gleaned from Bax’s wikipedia article he was a socialist and as was noted both here and in his article he was quite the antifeminist.
So how does that work with the idea that feminism is cultural marxism? One would have expected him to be in favor of it not against it, right?
Exactly Frank. Feminism hijacked and perverted socialism later – when it suited their purposes.
I know you have a ‘dispute’ with Paul Elam, but do you need to mention in every post that you’re not an MRA and not part of the MRM, etc.
A rose by any other name, my friend – what you are doing seems very much to be of the MRM.
My own part in the dispute is usually exaggerated. I let Jay know what I thought when he went after MND and FRS, but I had no part in the subsequent age of consent debates. The fact is that on this issue, I agree with your general thesis rather than with Paul’s criticisms. And I’m an MRA. I’d think a lot of MRAs agree with you. Hell, the majority of people who come here regularly are surely MRAs.
I guess all I’m saying is, I don’t get why you have to keep bringing up that you’re not an MRA and so on. This is like the sixth time you’ve added it to the bottom of an otherwise great post.
O.K, I promise not to again. Actually, I wonder if Paul Elam has read the works of Belfort Bax – surely he has. I also wonder if he’s read Steve Moxon’s ‘The Woman Racket’?
I saw that you linked to me on the Spearhead again (great comment). Thanks!
Out of curiosity, if you could forgive a new person for wandering by here, I’m just wondering but why do you think the age of consent should be 14? Why not younger? I’m not trolling or trying to be provocative actually, its just that I was reading some history earlier and noticed that in some places, the age of consent or marriage was as low as 12. Do you think those places were wrong, or is there a specific reason you think 14 is the best for age of consent? Thanks for your time; feel free to delete this comment if you think it’s unnecessary, of course. I was just wonderin, like I said.
Well, I think it should be no higher than 14. If a girl can vote at 18 (16 in Austria and possibly everywhere in the EU soon), or a boy can sacrifice his body at 18, then 14 year olds can do what the hell they want with their own bodies.
As I’ve stated many times, I would introduce ‘age of impregnation laws’. I would suggest that 14 year olds who have recieved proper sex education don’t need any protection (aside from rape laws that apply to everybody). Age of impregnation laws would apply to 12 &13 year olds.
If I ruled the world, lol.
I would make two further points :
1/ to say that ‘the age of consent is wrong’ doesn’t mean ‘there should be no age of consent’. It means that the age of consent (i.e. 16 in the UK) is wrong, too high. People who criticised Jay Hammers clearly can’t understand this.
2/ I think age of marriage should be higher than the age of consent. It’s ridiculous to have the two at the same age in a secular society which approves of casual pre-marital sex.
At the end of the day, the age of consent is always going to be arbitary. There is no objective way of determining the proper age. The only objective distinction is that of biology – the onset of menstruation. Given the fact that 9 year olds are beginning puberty these days, that’s hardly a final arbiter. Even the notion of a cut off point between adolescence and adulthood is vague and imprecise – most girls have stopped physically developing at 16, yet ‘adolescence’ in terms of the final maturing of the brain doesn’t end until the mid to late twenties, something that is in agreement with today’s culture in which many 25 year olds are still at college. Saying the age of consent should be 9 seems to me extreme, but no more extreme than saying that 20 year olds can’t consent to sex.
The only valid observation to make is that given the fact we live in secular societies (at least in Europe) that have largely seperated sex from marriage and, even to a large extent love and committment, and where 9 year olds are starting puberty, and 12 year olds have seen more naked bodies than 99% of adults did before the internet, and most 14 year olds are having some sexual experience, then it is ridiculous to say that a 15 year old can’t drop her pants when she can vote at 16 or 18.
Ah, I see. Thank you.